3sigma

His dignity for our free will or respect for it, comes from his righteous justness, but I hate I gotta stop here gotta get sleep I'm sorry but I will respond to more tomorrow sorry again I didn't get as far as I'd like but I'm trying my best here to be clear thanks to all of you for reading Any of this.

If this is you striving for clarity, I shudder to think what your posts would be like if you were actually trying to be opaque.

Hatter23 asked you to define your God. Just give us a factual description of your God. Can you do that? Please confine yourself to facts so please leave out all those waffling references to the Bible.

Just referring to this book or that, the Bible or the Koran) is an appeal to authority...and you yourself has stated that it isn't 100% factual. The books themselves disagree with each other, say on the divine nature of Christ. Plus there's the aspect that even the Bible disagrees with itself, such as a being so potent that it can create a universe, but incapable of defeating iron chariots, things like that.

Furthermore, you are using weasel descriptors and appeal to emotions. Please try again.

Logged

An Omnipowerful God needed to sacrifice himself to himself (but only for a long weekend) in order to avert his own wrath against his own creations who he made in a manner knowing that they weren't going to live up to his standards.

...it can be very difficult sometimes to understand the true meaning and many times meaning the text implies literally or through literary devices.

Samuelke! Why?!Why would it be "difficult to understand"? This is the instruction book on "How to join God in heaven (and not be tortured in hell for eternity)". Why would the writer ever, ever make it (allow it to be) difficult to read??? Does he secretly hate his creations? That's the only possible explanation that I can see (other than the entire book being complete fiction).

Alright I understand now I see what you all mean and how I can answer your questions here more in the fashion you all have depicted. I will have to give my answer tonight I just got out of class and I gotta go to work now but after I'll reply, and to do so I will have to refer to the Bible maybe a couple times I understand what you want and that is me to do this without the bible so I will only make a couple references, much less then before. It is just there is a very large and enormous body of evidence here and I want to display them as best possible and I concede that some evidence is not as strong, but I think that there definitely is a good amount of strong evidence, more then any other world view. I want to get into the origin of some of this evidences argument and go back and forth between responses given by both sides, theist and atheist. I'm really looking forward to it I'll be back on as soon as I can sorry for the waits.

We have yet to get any theist, including Samuelke, who can explain how to correctly interpret the bible. What passage is literal? What is poetic? What is parable? What is metaphor? And why is it so confusing that there can be no clearly agreed upon interpretation?

This is supposedly the book of instructions to save all of humanity. But you have to have the holy spirit magical decoder ring to understand it. Right.

Imagine directions on a bottle of medicine supposed to cure typhoid that was part metaphor, part poetry and part parable:

"A man named Jor-el had two sons. Each son had typhoid fever. One son loved his sheep more than life itself. The other son took two pills when the sun gave off its last light and the moon danced. The son who loved his sheep was blessed with many gorillas. And the two sons were taken by angels to see the face of the lord. The lord showed his wrath and all the sheep were dashed against rocks."

And then somebody says, "It clearly states that you should take two pills every night until the fever is gone." WTF? You would throw that bottle of medicine in the trash. You would not think the person who wrote those instructions was wise and kind, and loved you and wanted the very best for you. It is either an accident, a mistake or a very bad joke, not to be taken seriously.

We have yet to get any theist, including Samuelke, who can explain how to correctly interpret the bible. What passage is literal? What is poetic? What is parable? What is metaphor? And why is it so confusing that there can be no clearly agreed upon interpretation?

It really is strange, and you don't see it in "worldly" disciplines. There aren't thousands of different camps with wildly differing views on Newtonian mechanics, for example. You'd think Yahweh could do at least as well if not better.

Logged

[On how kangaroos could have gotten back to Australia after the flood]: Don't kangaroos skip along the surface of the water? --Kenn

We have yet to get any theist, including Samuelke, who can explain how to correctly interpret the bible. What passage is literal? What is poetic? What is parable? What is metaphor? And why is it so confusing that there can be no clearly agreed upon interpretation?

It really is strange, and you don't see it in "worldly" disciplines. There aren't thousands of different camps with wildly differing views on Newtonian mechanics, for example. You'd think Yahweh could do at least as well if not better.

If they could come to some agreement, they could print each type of statement in a different color.....then people could just read the factual, important passages. Would be about one page long.

Logged

When all of Cinderella's finery changed back at midnight, why didn't the shoes disappear? What's up with that?

Next we see God is giving and merciful, we can see this clearly in the ot where in Jeremiah God is angry with the Isrealites and there is a moment of God making a choice as to whether or not he will save them and he then says yes he will, and he will pay the price not us, so he will give us the gift of forgiveness out of his deep powerful love for us. He gives much more then only that but that itself is very important seeing how it speaks about all throughout. Though he is both righteous and merciful he is also just in judgement. We see he love and justness in his judgement by seeing Jesus surrounding himself his whole life with evil, and only use his love for the people themselves to conquer the evil. In Luke the story about the women with the alabaster ointment I think we see this very well, when Jesus let this women put this ointment on his feet. One person watching said if only Jesus knew who this women was, because she was looked on very low by the religious people at the time like murderers and that kind of people. But Jesus knew exactly who she was and said her story would be preached anywhere the gospels where truly preached. So Jesus thought extremely high of this person who the religious people and phrasees of the time thought the very lowest of.

God we see is extremely merciful to all people and very much so for those who don't believe even though it can be very hard to see. His dignity for our free will or respect for it, comes from his righteous justness, but I hate I gotta stop here gotta get sleep I'm sorry but I will respond to more tomorrow sorry again I didn't get as far as I'd like but I'm trying my best here to be clear thanks to all of you for reading Any of this.

Bold me.

Samuelke...are...are you actually reading the posts that myself and the others put here?I just have a hard time believing that, after reading the (many) questions on this subject thrown in your direction, you would have either (a) answered those questions or (b) not bothered to type those statements.

I really was hoping that you took your beliefs seriously. Really, truly did. Unfortunately it appears that I am mistaken.

Please prove me wrong.

Logged

"When we landed on the moon, that was the point where god should have come up and said 'hello'. Because if you invent some creatures, put them on the blue one and they make it to the grey one, you f**king turn up and say 'well done'."

Well this question is very interesting to me and important in many senses

Sam,

this was a rambling, preaching mess that did not come within shouting distance of my questions. Were you drunk when you wrote it?

I'm really sorry you thought that I really hope that this next answer I'll be posting shortly here will do a better job of showing logic and truth. Sorry again I really hope my next answering does more justice for the questions being asked that's what I would like to do.

I'm really sorry I have done such a terrible job so far but there ha been so many different questions I just try so hard to answer carefully and then obviously, most of the time I butcher my goal. But I understand the questions much better right now and I'm formulating my response I hope it is a little better then what you all though of my recent postings.

I'm really sorry I have done such a terrible job so far but there ha been so many different questions I just try so hard to answer carefully and then obviously, most of the time I butcher my goal. But I understand the questions much better right now and I'm formulating my response I hope it is a little better then what you all though of my recent postings.

The secret, is to keep it simple. Dont concern yourself with justifications and elaborating on the benevolence of God... we are well familiar with your stance on the topic. Simply answer the questions posed. If it takes more than 2 sentences to answer these simple questions you are making them harder than they need be. Also keep in mind that, even though it can explain your answer to your satisfaction, Biblical quotations cannot be used as a statement of fact.

Logged

"If we look back into history for the character of the present sects in Christianity, we shall find few that have not in their turns been persecutors, and complainers of persecution."

I'm really sorry you thought that I really hope that this next answer I'll be posting shortly here will do a better job of showing logic and truth. Sorry again I really hope my next answering does more justice for the questions being asked that's what I would like to do.

Keep in mind that they are yes-or-no questions. Their answers need not be longer than a yes or a no.

I'm really sorry you thought that I really hope that this next answer I'll be posting shortly here will do a better job of showing logic and truth. Sorry again I really hope my next answering does more justice for the questions being asked that's what I would like to do.

Keep in mind that they are yes-or-no questions. Their answers need not be longer than a yes or a no.

When answering my questions you don't need to be so brief, however keeping it tight and on topic is needed.

Logged

An Omnipowerful God needed to sacrifice himself to himself (but only for a long weekend) in order to avert his own wrath against his own creations who he made in a manner knowing that they weren't going to live up to his standards.

Here we go, taking a few steps back, starting off lets look in from the outside, the theist has a decent body of evidence to work with in supporting this case to show that God does exist, the atheist on the other hand has no evidence at all, zero in fact, to show that God does not exist and science has proven the orgin of life, atoms, and molucular processes, including all the laws of nature in chemistry and physics, not in any way. . The main thing you all have used against me is the bible and saying it contradicts itself, most of this comes from misreading and not understanding the full message, in this post I will give links at the bottom of some excellent sources that go through every single one of the claims against the bible and logically makes sense of them.

But in this post I'm going to try my best to show why I'm pursuaded to believe what I do and why I believe it to be rational, In no way can I prove to you all, that you are all wrong or please listen to me your a bad person and I am good one let me show you the way, please dont misunderstand what it is i am actually doing because it is nothing like that. I have no reason to think any of you to be bad people or myself, whether a person is bad or good I repect them and I think they are of individual worth and value. I respect each of your opinions and I just want to really show you why I believe what I do. now I'm not a philosopher or a scientist so if you can please bear with me I try my best to present a large variety of information. I'm gonna start with a more cosmological argument, First I give you this link, http://www.harvardhouse.com/Scientific_Evidence_for_Beginning.htm, I post this because someone

has tried to say that the universe could be eternal, and we know that isn't what is going on now. So let's really interact on this, how then if there was indeed a begining of time, matter, and space, how then do you explain a cause for this that existed prior to the singularity? You can't tell me it was a natural something that caused it because that would produce an unending cycle of things that need a prior cause, no abrstract object of sorts can explain this begining, the only logical explanation as I then see it is a supernatural, infinite(uncreated), all powerful being. I don't think it is logical either to say all this in the universe came to be by chance from absolute nothingness. So I'll ask if you can explain the universe and earth and how it came to be without the supernatural involved that is logical?

I know Richard Dawkins has a whole chapter in one of his books arguing mainly this idea, saying that God can't be the solution because the solution can not more complex then that which you are trying to explain. I have put great efforts in eliminating bias, and rationally considering many writtings similar to Dawkins. But everytime I do so, in my best understanding and evaluation these types of logical inconsistent statements pop up many, many times. This is what I see when I read his statement, first logically truth is exclusive, and we can all agree if two intelligent people saw an ancient symbol carved into the rock of a cave, they would both agree the symbol was made by a person with a mind. So there is on good and clear example of the solution or explanation to the symbol lies in the human mind that created it which is far more complex then just the symbol. We have many explanations in physics, Quantum physics, biology, and chemistry and in each the explanations given are far more complex then that which it is explaining. Or in another sense he was saying God is to complex an answer for it to be plausible and true. His statements are self defeating if he believes in science and modern science. This is due to the fact that not only is science and mathematics complex, as time goes further and further both science and mathematics, also grows vastly more complex with time and human progress.

Take gravity alone from newton to Einstein, both who saw science proving more and more to them that because of all that incredibly ordered, magnificent, and beautiful Complexity that sience and math reveal to us, and actually for newton he believed and science only strengthened his belief and Einstein of course later in life believed but it was science that played a large role in him finding God. That in itself to me is some revealing of how God can work, as to how each had a different personal path to their belief.

Ok so if we look at all of the matter in existence, the whole physical world, and we break one section down into the smallest section we could possibly find. In all these material sections or whatever you would like to call the matter, no natural life or existence of materiel Has the cause of its existence in itself. This, I don't think you can deny but we will see. Now to wrap all this up with quoting from some drawn out arguments on what I'm talking about.

Kalam cosmological argument

The aim of this argument is to show that the universe had a beginning in the finite past. The argument battles against the existence of an infinite, temporal regress of past events which implies a universe that has infinitely existed. This argument implies the existence of a First Cause.

The form of the argument is:

Whatever begins to exist has a cause.The universe began to exist.Therefore, the universe has a cause.

Thomistic cosmological argumentWhat we observe in this universe is contingent (i.e. dependent, or conditional)A sequence of causally related contingent things cannot be infiniteThe sequence of causally dependent contingent things must be finiteConclusion: There must be a first cause in the sequence of contingent causes

Leibnizian cosmological argumentThe argument comes from a German polymath, Gottfriend Wilhelm Leibniz. Leibniz wrote, "The first question which should rightly be asked is this: why is there something rather than nothing?"

The argument runs as follows:

Every existing thing has an explanation of its existence, either in the necessity of its own nature or in an external cause.If the universe has an explanation of its existence, that explanation is God.The universe is an existing thing.Therefore the explanation of the universe is God.Some atheists object to premise 2 in that God does not have to be the explanation, but that the universe can be what is called a necessary being (one which exists of its own nature and have no external cause). This was a suggestion of David Hume who demanded, "Why may not the material universe be the neccesarily existent being?" (Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, part 9). The Kalam Cosmological Argument is helpful. If Hume (and other atheists) is right in saying that the universe is a necessary being/thing, then this implies that the universe is eternal. This is exactly what the Kalam argument seeks to disprove. Thus, the Kalam is a valuable supplement to the Leibnizian argument.

Ok next I'm going to be talking about morals and what naturalism forces one to do when it comes to morals. As I see it, the postmodernism claim is that truth is relative and there is no absolute truth, now I'm not saying all of you believe in this exact way but just pointing something out. That claim I have stated there, is in itself an absolute truth claim and that is the very concept in which they have stated clearly doesnt exist at all. Now this idea of absolute morality, whether you think they don't exist or you think they are a bi-product of biology and society, neither case gives a good description of reality at all. I say this because I thought we all agreed that rape and murder and things of that nature were in fact bad or just caring for one another because of evolutionary instinct it is better for the survival of humans to care for each other. So first if you agree that those acts I described before we both consider not good, but if morals are relative and not absolute there is no reason to agree or not there is not even the chance either of us could actually be telling the truth. And second, to morals or ethics for evolution and society first I don't understand how you call it caring for one another when we each would only be acting that way, because it aids our own survival, that is actually caring for ones self more then others. And there would be no source of an absolute ethic guide it would differ in societies and lost into another sea of relativism, which relativism makes the absolute truth claim that all truth is relative. Where is the logic in that?

I think God gives us a good example(in my opininion)of how there is an absolute moral law and he is the absolute which we are to refer to. Take one look at the economic crisis that is taking place in most of the world, the cause of just about every last bit of it is due to borrowing an amount in which we can't afford, or printing money with no absolute reference like gold in this case, results in bills that lack any trust, which only the absolute can give. I would love to go more into detail on this which I have borrowed on the economics, but its that time. I'm going to pick up where I left off and hopefully bring together the full piece of work in its whole, and connect all what I'm trying to express here thanks to all of you.

I just throw in this link to this man here who is very well known in the science community just another's perspective on some of these kinds of questions if you care to read his, very intelligent way of pointing certain things.

3sigma

Good grief, Samuelke, are you being deliberately obtuse or can you just not help yourself?

After your last rambling screed, several of us asked you to keep your answers concise and to the point and yet here you are again with another barely coherent post that in no way answers any of our previous questions to you. The only part of that post that was coherent was the portion on the Cosmological Argument. In fact, its uncharacteristic coherence led me to suspect that you hadn’t written it at all so I went looking for it and, sure enough, it appears that you copied and pasted it verbatim from Conservapedia of all places. That tells us a lot about you.

Look, let’s start with something simple. Before you start talking about morals and creating things, just give us a factual description of your God. Give us some facts about it. For example, what size is it or what is its mass? If even that is too difficult for you, let’s start with the most basic fact about your God—what is its composition? Is it composed of matter, energy or something else? Please, please confine yourself only to facts. Stick to things that have been proven to be true.

I applaud the effort and work that must have gone into the last post. I am sorry to say I only read about 1/4 of it and scanned the rest. If it was meant for someone else, great. But it did not seem to answer my questions, at least not directly. So, I will try to make this easy for you. Below are the questions with answers. All you have to do is quote my post and delete the answers that do not apply. You do not have to type anything else. We'll get into explanations later.

If you had super powers that allowed you to do anything, would you use them to help people? yesno^ delete one

Would it be immoral if you did not?yesno^ delete one

Would you hide from people?yesno^ delete one

Would you insist they believe in you without seeing you?yesno^ delete one

In your latest post, you mention that a theist has a decent body of evidence to support their case that God does exist, while the atheist has no evidence whatsoever. Now it's time for you to back up that assertion. If there really is such a decent body of evidence, it should be no trouble to list a few examples and demonstrate how they unambiguously point to the existence of God. In short, show the evidence exists, don't just tell us it exists. We're a bunch of skeptics here, and while showing that evidence might not convince us, not showing it reduces the chances of convincing us to nothing.

You also say that we should really interact on the question of the beginning of the universe; I'm game. Regarding your question about a cause for matter, energy, and time before the Big Bang singularity exploded, I don't think there needs to be such a thing. We already know that there are quantum fluctuations that happen all the time, everywhere, which result in matter-antimatter pairs appearing spontaneously (from a single virtual 'point') and then disappearing as they come back together and cancel each other out. We know this because we can detect a form of radiation that seems to emit from black holes, with the result that the black hole "shrinks".

So we don't have to have a starting singularity at all. Remember, the Big Bang theory doesn't say that there was a singularity, it says that all matter and energy can be backtracked to a single dimensionless 'point'. This is practically the same thing as the quantum fluctuations I mentioned earlier, excepting the quantity of matter/energy appearing. And that isn't really a problem. When you consider that these quantum fluctuations happen everywhere, all the time, you could say that the amount of virtual matter in the universe far exceeds the amount of actual matter. And it's all zero-sum. It doesn't require an input of energy for virtual matter to appear, and its subsequent disappearance doesn't cause an output of energy. All it requires is something to delay them canceling each other out just long enough for them to have an effect, and they become real.

So, we have a process by which virtual matter can become real matter. In other words, something from nothing. And we can tell this happens through observation. Furthermore, once this process started, it would have acted like a singularity - the gravity of the initial particle-pair would have affected other particle-pairs and caused them to become real, in a chain reaction that would have caused an enormous amount of matter and energy to spontaneously appear from nothing.

Care to respond?

Logged

Nullus In Verba, aka "Take nobody's word for it!" If you can't show it, then you don't know it.

Secondly, your entire argument is based on an appeal to ignorance and special pleading. Furthermore the argument from ignorance you present is for the Deist god, and you switch into morality without building any argument that the deist god is an intervention oriented god, the god of the bible essentially.

You failed to meet any of the conditions of my three part challenge:

(1)Define God. Do not use weasel words or circular definitions.(2)Prove that that definition is not a logical paradox(3)Show proof that differs from the other ten thousand dieties manhas worshipped, again without committing a logical error

Special pleading, appeals to ignorance and non sequiturs...plus ignoring question one more or less entirely do not meet this challenge

Logged

An Omnipowerful God needed to sacrifice himself to himself (but only for a long weekend) in order to avert his own wrath against his own creations who he made in a manner knowing that they weren't going to live up to his standards.

I can't understand how this could be, therefore something else that I do understand must be the case.....

I honestly don't understand how hail--chunks of ice-- can fall from a warm, sunny, clear sky. Therefore, I believe in a giant invisible cosmic refrigerator with an ice maker component. No, I don't have to explain where it came from. The invisible cosmic fridge has always been up there. You can't prove that it doesn't exist. Scientific explanations don't make sense to me. My proof of invisible cosmic fridge is the presence of hail. So, you have to respect my beliefs.

Logged

When all of Cinderella's finery changed back at midnight, why didn't the shoes disappear? What's up with that?

I can't understand how this could be, therefore something else that I do understand must be the case.....

I honestly don't understand how hail--chunks of ice-- can fall from a warm, sunny, clear sky. Therefore, I believe in a giant invisible cosmic refrigerator with an ice maker component. No, I don't have to explain where it came from. The invisible cosmic fridge has always been up there. You can't prove that it doesn't exist. Scientific explanations don't make sense to me. My proof of invisible cosmic fridge is the presence of hail. So, you have to respect my beliefs.

Looks like you have a good body of evidence for your magic fridge, and I don't have any evidence it absolutely doesn't exist, therefore, praise the magic fridge.

P.S. One time I was thinking of the magic fridge and I saw a meteor. True story.

But in this post I'm going to try my best to show why I'm pursuaded to believe what I do and why I believe it to be rational, In no way can I prove to you all, that you are all wrong or please listen to me your a bad person and I am good one let me show you the way, please dont misunderstand what it is i am actually doing because it is nothing like that. I have no reason to think any of you to be bad people or myself, whether a person is bad or good I repect them and I think they are of individual worth and value. I respect each of your opinions and I just want to really show you why I believe what I do. now I'm not a philosopher or a scientist so if you can please bear with me I try my best to present a large variety of information. I'm gonna start with a more cosmological argument, First I give you this link,

Do you know what 'respect' means? How am I supposed to believe that you respect my opinion when it seems like you don't even pay attention to it?

Quote

I know Richard Dawkins has a whole chapter in one of his books arguing mainly this idea, saying that God can't be the solution because the solution can not more complex then that which you are trying to explain. I have put great efforts in eliminating bias, and rationally considering many writtings similar to Dawkins. But everytime I do so, in my best understanding and evaluation these types of logical inconsistent statements pop up many, many times. This is what I see when I read his statement, first logically truth is exclusive, and we can all agree if two intelligent people saw an ancient symbol carved into the rock of a cave, they would both agree the symbol was made by a person with a mind. So there is on good and clear example of the solution or explanation to the symbol lies in the human mind that created it which is far more complex then just the symbol. We have many explanations in physics, Quantum physics, biology, and chemistry and in each the explanations given are far more complex then that which it is explaining. Or in another sense he was saying God is to complex an answer for it to be plausible and true. His statements are self defeating if he believes in science and modern science. This is due to the fact that not only is science and mathematics complex, as time goes further and further both science and mathematics, also grows vastly more complex with time and human progress.

Depends on the symbol and context.

Quote

Take gravity alone from newton to Einstein, both who saw science proving more and more to them that because of all that incredibly ordered, magnificent, and beautiful Complexity that sience and math reveal to us, and actually for newton he believed and science only strengthened his belief and Einstein of course later in life believed but it was science that played a large role in him finding God. That in itself to me is some revealing of how God can work, as to how each had a different personal path to their belief.

You should look into this more to see if this statement is true. Even though it has no bearing on your argument, I'd hate for you to be misinformed.

Quote

Ok next I'm going to be talking about morals and what naturalism forces one to do when it comes to morals. As I see it, the postmodernism claim is that truth is relative and there is no absolute truth, now I'm not saying all of you believe in this exact way but just pointing something out.

My guess is that you didn't mean to use the word 'postmodern' in here. Also, the rest of this mishmash you have in the above is, frankly, pretty infuriating at this point seeing as how we keep asking you questions regarding morality and you keep dodging. Then you bring this s**t up as if no one said a word to you about morality. Refer to the 'respect' clause above please.

Maybe you really are considering everything that has been spouted to you/asked of you in the last 10 pages of this forum. But from where I stand, you look like someone who just plain doesn't give a damn whether or not their beliefs are true. I asked you to prove me wrong earlier; you failed miserably. I have no reason at this point to believe you will change my mind.

"When we landed on the moon, that was the point where god should have come up and said 'hello'. Because if you invent some creatures, put them on the blue one and they make it to the grey one, you f**king turn up and say 'well done'."

Alright I understand now I see what you all mean and how I can answer your questions here more in the fashion you all have depicted. I will have to give my answer tonight I just got out of class and I gotta go to work now but after I'll reply.....

Okay - time I think for a Moderator hat.

Sam has had a huge number of questions thrown at him. I can therefore understand his temptation to try to issue a "collective" answer that addresses them all, rather than get deep-down specific on one or two.

Unfortunately, Sam, this isn't working. So I would therefore strongly suggest that Sam answers just TWO questions - I've given some notes on these below. I would like to ask our members to hold off opening any new avenues of inquiry until these queations have been answered. Sam, please read my "guidance notes" carefully, and try to follow them. Doing so will reduce the amount of complaints you get from members that your answers do not actually answer the questions posed.

QUESTION 1: SCREWTAPE's QUINTET.If you had super powers that allowed you to do anything, would you use them to help people? Would it be immoral if you did not?Would you hide from people?Would you insist they believe in you without seeing you?Would you destroy them if they didn't love you?

QUESTION 1 GUIDANCE NOTES. To begin with, answer these questions with a very clear "yes" or "no". If you want to expand on why you have given an answer, that's fine - but make sure that you begin by saying explicitly if your answer is "yes" or "no".

QUESTION 2: HATTER'S DEFINITION OF GOD.Hatter asked you to "Define God. Do not use weasel words or circular definitions." There were more subsidiary questions, but let's look at this one first.

QUESTION 2 GUIDANCE NOTES.Try answering this question as if someone thinks they have seen or experienced your god, but isn't reaslly sure. How would you define and describe your god so that they would be able to say "ah, yes, that was what I saw" or "no, I saw something quite different".

EXAMPLE: Define "a lion". Your answer might be "a lion is a large cat-like creature. It has a mane of hair and large teeth and claws. It is sandy-brown in colour. It eats meat and will kill creatures such as deer and antelope. It lives in a group of around a half-dozen, in which there is usually only one male". Such a description would be very useful if someone had seen a creature they had never seen before, since they could compare your description to their actual experience and use it to work out if what they had experienced actually WAS a lion, as opposed to (say) a black panther, a wolf, or a snake.Try to steer clear of lengthy explanations of WHY your god is what he is - if you really feel you must do so, do it in a seperate paragraph AFTER the actual detailed description.

Hopefully this will get us moving and help you to focus on the questions that we are asking.

I applaud the effort and work that must have gone into the last post. I am sorry to say I only read about 1/4 of it and scanned the rest. If it was meant for someone else, great. But it did not seem to answer my questions, at least not directly. So, I will try to make this easy for you. Below are the questions with answers. All you have to do is quote my post and delete the answers that do not apply. You do not have to type anything else. We'll get into explanations later.

^ delete one

^ delete one

^ delete one

^ delete one

no^ delete one

Ok yeah I have failed I see that I try again.

If you had super powers that allowed you to do anything, would you use them to help people? yes

Would it be immoral if you did not?yes

Would you hide from people?

no

Would you insist they believe in you without seeing you?Ok before I answer this you have to answer this, what exactly are you intending by believing without seeing? Do you not believe in anything you can't see physically, so things like, we can physically see the human brain but many do indeed believe we also have a mind that there is no physical proof for, or I could go on to name many scientific things most believe in without physically seeing like dark matter and dark energy. So I'll further reply upon your reply here.

Would you destroy them if they didn't love you?I'm going to need clarifaction here too sorry, but I'm wondering if you are asking me this as well, which I'm thinking but let me know if I'm wrong, is maybe if me or you were God and created this and humans, would we love these humans and give them a choice to believe in you or not to, or have no relationship and love with them and just let them live and die or just automatically everyone goes to heaven or whatever other way you can put this? I'll respond after that sorry I just want to be clear about things before I go and get all this muddied up like I already have repeatedly done and for which I seriously apologize I wasnt trying to do that. I really was trying to explain first why I do believe what I do but I realize that's not where you all what to start, seriously I was deliberately being stubborn I just trying to answer the questions and tell you why all at once but I've been over thinking it a lot. But I'm ready to slow down and really try and work through your questions I do hope that I haven't driven everyone away I have enjoyed all of our discussions thank all.